The Mereological Fallacy In Psychology: Do You Feel, Or Does Your Brain Do It?
When you think of something that brings you back to your past memories, Are you the one who reflects, or does your brain do it? Turning your attention to mental phenomena as internalized as memories can tell us that everything you do at that moment is limited to internal activity, something carried out by the nervous system.
But, on the other hand, couldn’t we say that it is always the brain that thinks and feels, given that our entire mental life is linked to it? There is no need to limit ourselves to what happens when we remember: when talking to someone, the brain transforms concepts into words, right? In fact, we could even say that it is not the entire brain, but a part of it, that thinks and plans: what the prefrontal cortex does is not the same as what the medulla oblongata does.
If these questions have led you to think that your real “I” is your brain enclosed in a set of muscles and bones, just as a train driver operates a train from the cabin, many philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists would tell you that you have fallen. in what It is known as mereological fallacy. Let’s move on to the corresponding question.
Although the study of mental processes and the brain is very complicated, that does not mean that it is impossible. We currently have a level of technology that allows us to keep systematic records on nervous activity and behavior, so that lines of research that a few decades ago seemed like science fiction stories are now a reality.
Now, many philosophers would say that the revolution of technological advances that we have experienced in the second half of the 20th century and so far in the 21st century has not been accompanied by a revolution of ideas comparable to the previous one; At least, in terms of our way of thinking about how the human brain and behavior work. Many times we fall into something that some philosophers have called mereological fallacy.
This concept It was promoted by the philosopher Peter Hacker and the neuroscientist Maxwell Bennett that, it is his work Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, pointed out a mistake that, according to them, most brain and psychology researchers had been making: confusing the part with the whole. For example, stating that the brain reflects, chooses, values, etc.
From the point of view of these two authors, the way in which mental processes are conceived by both the majority of people at a popular level and many researchers in the scientific field is not very different from those who believe in a soul that, from somewhere of the brain, governs the body. Thus, the mereological fallacy is not technically a fallacy because it does not arise from an erroneous argument (although it is in the broadest sense of the term), but rather a failure to attribute a subject to a predicate.
Thus, falling into the mereological fallacy is attributing to the brain, or some of its parts, properties and actions that are actually performed by people. In the same way that it would be absurd to say that it is not the falcon but its wings that fly, it would be fallacious to say that the brain thinks, reflects or decides. We often get carried away by these assumptions simply because It is easier for us to understand how the mind works if we let ourselves be carried away by reductionism and not because scientific research has shown that this set of organs reasons or thinks apart from the rest of the body.
That is, the mereological fallacy consists of understanding the human mind in a very similar way to what philosophers like René Descartes did to explain what the psyche is by appealing to the spiritual and the divine. This is an error with deep roots.
From Cartesian dualism to metaphysical monism
The study of the brain has been marked for centuries by dualism, that is, the belief that reality is composed of two substances, matter and spirit, radically differentiated. This is an intuitive belief, since it is easy to consider that there is a clear division between one’s own state of consciousness and almost everything else, the “external”, it is very simple.
In the 17th century, René Descartes created a philosophical system that formalized the relationship between the body and the mind; just as he understood this relationship. Thus, the mind, the spiritual, would be seated in the pineal gland of the brain, and from there it would govern the acts carried out by the body. The precedent of the mereological fallacy, thus, was present from the beginning of the formalization of the scientific study of the brain, and of course This affected psychology and philosophy.
However, openly declared dualism did not last forever: already in the 20th century, monistic approaches, according to which everything is matter in motion, gained hegemonic status. Philosophers and researchers who point out the existence of the mereological fallacy as a recurring problem suggest that this generation of researchers He continued to treat the brain as if it were a synonym for the soul or, rather, as if it were a miniature person who controls the rest of the organism. That is why the mereological fallacy is also called the homunculus fallacy: it reduces human properties to small and mysterious entities that supposedly live in some corner of our heads.
Thus, although dualism was apparently rejected, in practice it was still considered that the brain or its parts could be understood as an essence to which we could attribute our identity. The monists used ideas based on metaphysics to rename the soul and baptize it as “brain”, “frontal lobe”, etc.
Introspection can lead us to identification with the brain. | Giovanni Bellini
The consequences of the mereological fallacy
The mereological fallacy can be understood as a deficient use of language when talking about what mental processes really are like and what the human condition is. It is no coincidence that Peter Hacker is a follower of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher known for having argued that the failures of philosophy are actually inappropriate uses of language. However, falling into this fallacy means much more than not speaking properly.
A linguistic error that can have consequences beyond the simple confusion of terms is, for example, look for parts of the brain responsible for thinking or making decisions, something that usually leads to analyzing increasingly smaller areas of the brain. Let us remember that this, considering the existence of the mereological fallacy, would be like attributing to the shaft of windmills the property of moving the blades.
Furthermore, this trend is a way to continue believing in something very similar to the soul without calling it by that name. As a consequence, the belief that there is an essence from which our actions and decisions are born remains intact, and body/mind dualism, or rejection of the idea that we are not fundamentally different from any other animal, is still there, disguised.
The concept of mereological fallacy has not been unanimously accepted by neuroscientists or philosophers of mind. John Searle and Daniel Dennett, for example, have been critical of this. The second, for example, states that it is possible to talk about “partial” actions and intentions and attribute them to the brain and its sub-systems, and that expanding the meaning of the terms “think” or “feel” in this way is not harmful. It is a point of view that supports pragmatism, downplaying the negative consequences of the mereological fallacy.
Furthermore, it may be thought that when it comes to talking about the brain outside of scientific fields, whether in everyday life or in popularization, it is very difficult to talk about the functioning of the brain without doing it just as we would do about it. of people. This has made it a relatively little-known idea: it describes something that we have been doing for centuries and that we do not normally see as a problem that affects us. Essentialism is something that is very attractive when it comes to explaining all types of phenomena, and if we can reduce the causes of something to a clearly identifiable element isolated from the rest, we usually do so unless we are attentive.
At the moment, then, it is difficult to find a way to talk about the mechanisms of the nervous system without automatically and inadvertently falling into the mereological fallacy. Doing so requires entering into preambles that few informative initiatives can withstand, and having experience and training in philosophy and neuroscience that few people can afford. However, that does not mean that it is better to forget the fact that this problem is still there, that it is important to take it into account both in research and in faculties related to Psychology and Philosophy, and that metaphors about how the brain works You have to take them as such.
